


Get Your Shoes Off, Baby

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Improvised Wedding Customs, M/M, Marriage After Long Separation, Porn with Feelings, Post-War, Simple Wedding, Unexpected Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-07-30 12:31:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20097286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Finn admitted he didn't, quite, know what marriage meant or entailed."Makes two of us," Poe said and squeezed his hand. "Guess we find out together?"After years apart, Finn and Poe reunite. They're not going to part again, not if they have anything to say about it.





	Get Your Shoes Off, Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merle_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/gifts).

> The title comes from Sonny Boy Williamson's "[Slowly Walk Close To Me](https://youtu.be/e8ZfYhFO1L8)": Pull your shoes off darlin'/Come on tippin' up to me, early in the mornin'/Getcho shoes off baby, slowly walk, close to me.

Everything went to hell when peace broke out.

Poe crashed, badly. Not even in battle; that, at least, would have been respectable, as well as familiar. Instead, he crashed _on the way back home_ from the surrender ceremony. He didn't walk away from this one. He didn't even crawl away.

He was off comms for that leg of the journey, and taking a short cut anyway, so no one knew what had happened for a good half a tenday.

"Hey," he pointed out, "at least my cover held? That's something."

He was stuck in a backwater clinic on the far side of the second moon of Sestro. The moon's communications equipment left a lot to be desired; he appeared on Finn's holo display in silver, as a tiny face, like an optical illusion emerging from rain running down a window.

"You didn't need to fly under cover," Finn said. "War's over."

"But it held, is the thing. Not bad."

Finn was quiet for a while. "Celebrating hasn't been the same without you."

They didn't exactly have a commitment. Nothing like that. Maybe what they had was an _understanding_. They _understood_ that they liked spending time together; that the sex was phenomenal; that they made a good pair when they had time to spend together.

"This is how I celebrate," Poe said. "Maybe this is what peace is all about."

"By disappearing?"

"By embracing the unexpected."

Finn stared at the wavering hologram. Whatever he thought he'd _understood_ was breaking up and dissolving.

*

They didn't see each other for a little over five years.

There was so much work to do simultaneously: both cleaning up after the war and starting anew. Rose went off with the Engineer Corps on a survey of the worst destruction, while Rey and Leia went off in the other direction. Their goal was far less clear; Finn gathered it had to do with consulting various populations as well as exploring new manifestations of the Force.

The surrender had taken place outside the city, where Hux's coup had succeeded in dispatching Kylo Ren into a stream of black smoke, but failed in establishing any kind of competent leadership. Hux himself died, either by his own hand or not, shortly before the surrender.

Jurists, philosophers, social scientists, and, it seemed, three of each of their friends, gathered in Crinquast City to hash out how the galaxy was to be administered.

Finn became their host. 

Finn moved into the top floor of a house in the old quarter of Crinquast City with Chewbacca. At first, it seemed like they were simply bunking together as they'd done off and on during the war. The apartment featured very high ceilings; Finn assumed that was what drew Chewie to stay. It was good to have the company, that was for sure. He was finally picking up more that just the occasional curse in Shyriiwook, for one thing. Chewie proved a pretty insightful conversation partner when Finn needed to untangle just what different constituents were expecting and hoping for. _Never compromise so much that you fall off the branch_ was just about the best advice Finn got in those heady, frantic days and months.

When Finn returned from a brief tour of Rim worlds to find that Chewie had converted three-quarters of their balcony to a greenhouse and started gardening there, it became clear that the Wookiee was here to stay. By then, they were more than amiable flatmates. Chewie had taken to keeping an eye on Finn's sleep patterns, and he had no compunctions about switching off holo-calls when he judged it was time for Finn to sleep. He interrupted more than a few meetings, too, simply by appearing and refusing to leave. They shared morning and evening meals whenever they could, and not simply because, as Chewie claimed, Finn was the better cook.

"Always knew you were made for big things," Poe said during a holo-call. "Inventing a whole new galaxy's just in a day's work for you."

Finn rolled his eyes. "I'm making it up moment by moment."

"Bantha-shit."

Finn had to get back to the legislative conference. "You ought to be here."

"Me? Never was any good at sitting still and listening." He made a face for emphasis. The bandage over his bad eye didn't move, which made him look ghastly for a moment.

"It's not _school_, Poe, it's —"

"I'd just distract everyone."

"No," Finn said, even as Poe's face turned away. "You wouldn't."

*

In the rehab facility, Poe kept his cover name. Timon Bey was just another banged-up vet. Poe Dameron, on the other hand, might have attracted undue attention. There were ex-First Order vets here as well as Resistance. It wasn't as if he'd ever been the most popular guy among his comrades anyway. After the _Raddus_, he didn't want to know what his reputation was.

Timon took his turn in the whirlpool and led a side in the local bladder-pitch league to a respectable third-place finish. He practiced his embroidery with the rest, cursing the tremors in his hands and uselessness of his bad eye. Supplies everywhere were limited, but especially anything to do with health care. He couldn't get bacta treatments for the eye and eventually, after nearly a year, it was removed.

He took up smoking the sticky, faintly narcotic local spice blend.

He learned, again, how to play the drummed lute. He'd done it in crèche, like everyone on Yavin, but hadn't picked one up since he left for the academy. Now, his coordination needed all the help it could get.

He composed letters to Finn in his mind. They were beautiful things, ornate in execution yet plainspoken and honest. They were _poetry_. They were everything he would have said aloud, but better, because they were quiet. They were like Finn himself, rewarding contemplation.

_You're a good man, Finn. Probably way too good for the likes of me._

They were never written down, let alone transmitted. He was a one-eyed shuffling vet without any prospects. Who was he to share his feelings? Write poetry? 

Time all but stopped there in the facility. That is to say, they were all stuck in their own little world, so focused on learning again how to do old things, things that younglings took for granted. Time looped for them, but outside, forged on ahead. They were caught here looking backward while the rest of the galaxy very deliberately pushed ahead.

*

When Leia and Rey passed through the city, they stayed with Finn and Chewbacca.

"This life suits you," Leia said. She grasped both of Finn's hands in her small ones as she looked him over. Chewie was on the balcony, helping Rey wrestle a sapling nearly as tall as Finn himself into position among all his other plants.

"You think?" Finn asked. "Because I'm exhausted all the time, and frustrated three-quarters of that, and feel like I don't know my own name half of that."

Chewie shouted something at that and Leia laughed. "Despite the old man's best efforts, he claims." 

"He babies me," Finn whispered.

"He loves doing that," she whispered back. "Always did."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, their arms around each other, as they watched Rey and Chewie argue about sunlight and watering methods.

As frustrated as he got, Finn appreciated that he was good at this work. Digging into negotiations, assembling compromises, _learning_ everything he could: he loved this. The fact that he didn't even have to kill anyone made everything that much better.

*

After Poe got out of rehab, he bounced around a few different places in search of a life that suited him. He flew some long-haul freight runs for Lando before he had to admit — with the assistance of a lot of good brandy and three doses of recreational spice — that his hands and vision just weren't good enough for the cockpit, any cockpit, any longer.

"I've seen this before," Lando told him. They reclined on the exquisitely comfortable low couches in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. All that was visible from this angle were the distant edges of a volcanic range, sharp as dragon's teeth in the lavender sky.

"What's that?" Poe asked.

"Restless. At loose ends." He waved his dish of cold, spicy noodles. "Unsure of one's place in the postwar order."

Poe adjusted his lapels. "I'm not Solo."

"That," Lando said, "is very true."

He smiled and Poe returned the expression. It was not entirely clear to him just what they were agreeing on, but they seemed to have come to an accord.

"Have you considered professional gambling?"

"Excuse me?"

Lando's shrug was theatrical and elegant. "It offers the excitement and uncertainty you're missing but little in the way of frequent mortal danger. That is, if you play smart."

"I'm not much of a gambler," Poe said.

"We'd have to work on your tells, that's for sure. You're a hi-def holo in sensurround."

Standing, Poe made for the window. "I'm not that bad."

"Oh, my dear," Lando replied, lightly, as if he really could not possibly care less, "you're much, much worse."

*

Finn and Poe tried to keep in touch with the occasional holo call. Coordination, however, proved unexpectedly difficult. The few times when Finn was free, Poe was in transit or asleep.

*

Poe missed Leia's 57th Life Day celebration, sending his apologies during the party itself. He claimed that it was too difficult to get out of the Wothian system so soon after quarantine was lifted.

The party was enormous. At one point, Rey looked around and observed that a single mortar from a lone First Order holdout would take out the backbone of the new galaxy. 

"That's not very cheery," Finn chided her but she simply grinned at him. 

He couldn't enjoy himself. First, he was keeping an eye out for Poe. Then, after he received the message, he was distracted composing angry replies.

Later, as the party was breaking up into discrete groups, Leia came and found Finn outside. They sat together in the cool night air, quiet for a long time. Finn's disappointment shifted and ground inside him; it felt less like disappointment and far more like anger.

"It's not important," Leia said finally. She held his hand and Finn had to remind himself not to squeeze too hard. She seemed smaller these days. 

"It is," he replied. "But I also can't do anything about it."

"You will find your way to each other," she said. When he snorted and shook his head — at the moment, the last thing he wanted was Poe fucking Dameron — she pinched the back of his hand to get his attention. "It happened once, in the worst possible times. It will happen again."

"Once was enough," he said.

She laughed softly.

*

"I'm so mad at you," Finn said when Poe did call again, nearly a month later. "_Furious_."

Poe put on his most dashing smile. "Because you miss me so much?"

"Right now? Because you're a fucking asshole."

"Oh."

*

Poe was back on Yavin-4. He'd returned for his father's wedding to a couple just five or seven years older than himself. Finn's holo arrived during the feast. He could barely hear Poe's voice amid all the music and shouting. 

"What's a Yavin wedding like, anyway?"

"This is just the first day!" Poe shouted to be heard. "It's madness! Chaos! Amazing! Check it out!"

He swung the holo recorder around. All Finn could make out were lanterns strung in the trees, smearing bright and red with the motion, and many, many bodies dancing in the firelight.

"Look, buddy, I gotta go, can we do this another time?" Poe veered back into view. His face was sweaty, reflecting the lights and catching curls along his forehead. Someone was pulling on his shirt, looping an arm around his neck.

"Sure," Finn said. "Of course."

*

In the harsh midmorning light, Chewie sat cross-legged, bent over a buxom little shrub spiked with white flowers. His fur nearly glowed red around him.

"What're you doing?" Finn asked. Somehow, miraculously, he didn't have any meetings or conferences all day, so he was still in his underwear and carrying a second bowl of breakfast porridge.

Chewie mumbled something, but he had a branch caught in his mouth while he wielded a tiny knife over the shrub.

"Of course, how silly of me," Finn replied. He dragged his favorite sitting mat closer and plopped down. He ate while watching Chewie make small, delicate cuts in the branches. For such a huge person, his touch was unerring and exquisitely graceful.

When he was finished, he held up the grafted branches. "One stalk, two flowers."

Finn nodded. Anything he knew about gardening, which wasn't much, he'd picked up out here. "Looks great."

Chewie wiped clean his knives and slipped them back into a pouch on his belt. Pollen and leaves were scattered in his fur and smudged on his face. "You need mate."

Finn set his bowl aside. "Um, that's kind of personal."

Chewie pointed at him. "Mate."

"I do okay," Finn protested. "I'm not a monk!"

"No," Chewie said, voice dropping into a definite growl. "Mate noun. Person. Partner. Or more."

"But I've got you."

Chewie snorted so hard that one of the flowers near him shed a couple petals. "You're not my type."

*

Poe stayed on Yavin-4 for a year and a half. He thought he would be helping his father with harvests and planting. Kes Dameron's new triad nearly doubled the ranch's acreage, but he also had more than enough help. Poe stayed in one of the outbuildings, however, through the rainy season. He didn't exactly get along with Kes's new partners.

"Wicked steptrio?" Finn asked during one of their occasional holo-calls.

"Something like that." Poe had his knees up to his chest and a bidi burning between his first two fingers. He looked, somehow simultaneously, very young — disgruntled, with longer, blowsier hair — and older than ever — circles under his eyes, pinched little lines around his lips from smoking. "Never mind. What's up with political theorizing and building a whole new republic from scratch?"

Finn laughed and shrugged. "I just show up every day and see what I can do."

"Yeah," Poe said. "Me, too."

Everywhere he looked, life was getting on with it.

He went back to Sestro, then to some of the core worlds, lute in hand. He did all right moving from settlement to settlement, asking locals about their music, getting them to sing for BB-8's holo-recorder and teach him their favorite songs. He was good at talking to strangers; he always had been. It was maintaining friendships that seemed to elude him.

Lando called him an ethnomusicologist when Poe borrowed credits from him again. Poe didn't argue, because it sounded much better than _vagrant with a song_, which was BB-8's preferred phrase.

*

Finn was finishing up a brief tour of the Outer Rim at this multidisciplinary conference. He read his new paper on Reconfiguring Identity After Liberation to some argument but, more importantly, much discussion. A banquet closed out the conference. Finn would have departed earlier that day, but his session was rescheduled at the last minute. So there he was, eating some flavorless salad and chatting politely with a Kaminoan jurist while a small ensemble played local folk music on a revolving platform.

It was pretty stuff, the music, cascades of chittering chords against higher-pitched three-note drone and the slow beat of simple percussion. Just a palm against a bowl or upturned gourd, regular as a heartbeat, while the plucked notes soared and swooped. Finn was tapping along with the rhythm as he looked around; the Kaminoan had turned to their other side to accost a centrist Rodian.

As he watched, a human woman on the platform began to sing. Her voice was low and sweet and she stood perfectly still, one arm crossed behind her back. To her right, a dark-haired musician sat cross-legged, bent over the large instrument in their lap. When he wasn't plucking the strings, he knocked his palm against a small protuberance on the bottom of the instrument. 

Finn dropped his spoon as the platform spun past him and the singer's voice crooned.

There were threads of silver in the musician's hair, more at his temples, but even sitting, with his face obscured, he was unmistakable. Something buoyant filled Finn's chest, yanked him into a brighter place that made his eyes sting, swept gravity away from his body and left him trembling and tingling.

_Poe_.

He swallowed. He could hardly interrupt the performance, but it was difficult to sit and watch. On the platform, Poe might have been a stranger. He was entirely absorbed in playing; if he looked up, around the hall, Finn never caught it. He swayed slowly, like something caught in a shallow river, while his fingers executed complicated movements. Those hands hadn't touched Finn in years, but he felt them again now. That mouth, singing along, hadn't found Finn's own for a very long time.

As the music dwindled down and the banquet broke up, Finn worried for a moment about what he would say, how he looked, if there were actually any reason to approach Poe. Then he recovered his senses. He was dressed for a semiformal banquet, after all. 

When he approached the platform, where Poe and the others were packing up, he still didn't know what he was going to say. There were a thousand things to say, effusive and surprised and apologetic and recriminatory and delighted. There was nothing to say, just an extended hand. There was everything in between.

"Finn," Poe said before Finn's mouth found whatever words (or not). He set down his instrument and stepped forward with his arms out. Everything sped up, until they were embracing and then Poe's hands were on Finn's face and he was _peering_ at him and smiling and when Finn turned his head to kiss the tendon between Poe's thumb and hand, Poe said his name five, six, seven more times.

They'd embraced plenty during the war. This was at once gentler and less frantic and _more_ intense. The bright thrill buoying Finn up did not subside, but strengthened.

His arm around Finn's waist, Poe made his apologies to the ensemble.

"Could you have a drink?" he asked. "I'd ask you to dinner, but looks like you already ate."

Finn choked on a laugh. "I could have a drink. Or —" When he paused, Poe looked at him, lips pressed together. "Come to my room?"

"Yeah!" Poe nodded rapidly and hefted his instrument. "That's it, that's exactly it."

They stopped outside the banquet hall to kiss, and then again on three of the seven landings in the stairwell. By the time they reached Finn's floor, he was exhilarated but wary, too. What was he _doing_? What could possibly be accomplished by groping Poe Dameron, all these years later, and half-drowning in the taste of his kisses?

So much time had passed. Touching Poe now, seeing him, feeling him laugh against his neck and stumble backward into the room, was dizzying. They were older now, they barely knew each other any longer, and yet. 

"What?" Poe set down his case and shrugged off his jacket and kissed Finn's throat until Finn stumbled. "You look —" He circled his hand, thinking of the word. "_Philosophical_."

"This is not the best idea," Finn admitted.

"It doesn't have to be —" Poe broke off as Finn's hands pushed up under his jersey. His thumbs found Poe's nipples unerringly and Poe's head thumped back. "Fuck. Harder."

"This is —" Finn tried again.

Hand twisted up in Finn's longer hair, Poe kissed him, open-mouthed and urgent. "Just for tonight, how's that?"

"Well, yes, of course it's just tonight." Finn shook his head. "You're leaving and I'm —"

"Exactly. So just go with it?"

Poe peered at him, his mouth wet and swollen already, his eyes blurred by lashes. 

"Yes," Finn said. "You're right."

No need to worry or get tense when the subject would be moot in the morning. And he _had_ missed this. All of this, Poe's body, the solid planes of his torso and taste of his mouth, how he chuckled into kisses, how he looked when you got your hand on his dick — always startled and so very pleased. He'd missed _Poe_ most of all, the person in the body, the person humming and grunting and pushing closer for more touch. The name alone was somehow not enough to capture what Finn had missed. It was too small, too brief, to begin to encompass what Finn had been needing.

"I want —"

"Can you —"

"Let's —"

Finally, laughing, they stepped apart and raised their hands. 

"You first," Finn said.

"No," Poe said. "Tell me."

"Damn it."

"What? That was incredibly gallant of me!"

"Yeah, but —" Finn shook his head.

"Look, one of us is a big-time political thinker, and one of us is about a month away from being a flat-out hobo."

Frowning, Finn moved closer. "What's that have to do with anything? And, what? Hobo?"

"Never mind," Poe said. "I'm just, you know. _Transient_."

"And what am I?"

Their voices had dropped. They were close enough to feel each other's breath, but they were not touching.

"Amazing," Poe replied. He nudged forward, hands settling back on Finn's waist. "Always were."

Finn buried his face against the curve of Poe's neck. "Shut up."

"You are, though."

"Is this how you talk to all your one-night stands?" He meant that to sound light and teasing, but his voice was rough.

Poe kissed him, walking Finn backward until they hit the edge of the sleeping platform. "No," he said, pushing Finn down to sit and dropping (not without an ache and several creaks) to his knees before him. He kissed the lower part of Finn's torso, found the softly whorled hair gathering in volume as he moved downward, and soon enough Finn was lifting his ass so Poe could tug off his trousers.

"You don't have to —" Finn started to say.

Poe dragged his mouth up the inside of one thigh from knee to crease, then across the swell of Finn's balls. "Have to? Try _need_ to. Want to. Can't stop myself."

Laughter crowded Finn's throat, but it came out in a sudden hoarse wheeze when Poe's mouth wrapped around Finn's cockhead and his tongue swirled the other way.

Poe pulled back, his smile tilted. "Remember the first time I did this?"

"Yeah," Finn said and took hold of the back of Poe's hair. "'Choke me', you said, 'fill me up'."

Poe's smile widened from smirk into something genuine, just for a moment before he shook his head to test Finn's hold, then pushed his mouth back down his shaft. He wasn't going to make this last; he was too hungry, too overwhelmed by the rush of memories and long-nurtured grief and regret as well as arousal, to do much of anything but suck and swallow and take. His lips ached, stretched around Finn, and spit ran down his chin. He swiped two fingers in his own mess and reached past Finn's balls to tease his crack.

"Fuck," Finn muttered, holding Poe's head in place and lifting his hips, parting his legs farther. "Fuck, yes, _please_."

Poe didn't know if that was a new note in Finn's voice, this pleading desperation. Maybe time had blurred his memories, maybe Finn had had lovers who taught him other pitches, made him sound different. Whatever it was, the sound corkscrewed through Poe's chest, made him hungrier yet as well as _sad_, sad and eager and equally desperate.

"You want to finish like this?" Poe asked, when he had to break for breath, when his tongue was numb. "Whatever you want."

Finn flopped back. His dick bounced with the motion. "I want you."

"Oh, you've got that, man." Poe climbed up to straddle Finn's thighs. "You want to come down my throat?"

"Yes." Finn had his eyes screwed shut as he nodded quickly. His hands roved over Poe's back and up and down his arms.

"Or fuck my ass?"

"Yes. That, too."

"Greedy," Poe said cheerfully.

Finn's eyes opened and he clutched at Poe's ass. "I missed you."

"Yeah," Poe said as he breathed out. He rocked back into Finn's touch. "Me, too."

"Turn over?" Finn asked.

Poe scrambled off, shedding his singlet, kicking off a boot he had somehow missed. "This good?"

Finn pulled him, gently, by the hair until his head was hanging off the platform. Then he moved aside, stood up, and bent over Poe. He filled Poe's vision, his dick brushing Poe's lips, and Poe opened his mouth to moan as Finn got his own mouth on Poe's dick.

Whoever taught him this, Poe owed that guy _everything_. Finn thrust deep into Poe's mouth, right up against his soft palate, and Poe wrapped his arms around Finn's hips, cracking his jaw to open wider, take more, all while Finn bobbed his head and worked Poe's dick with his tongue and one hand. They grunted and wheezed together, Finn's balls slapping, their spit singing. Poe bent his knees and planted his feet flat on the platform to thrust up, and in return, Finn ground in deeper yet to Poe's throat.

"Damn it, _fuck_!" Finn reared back, Poe's dick snapping free, and drove forward several times, shuddering. He came in Poe, then across his face, and shouted again as his cock continued to shoot long after his balls were empty.

Poe tasted the sour come, and relished it, and put a hand on himself to follow suit.

"Wait," Finn said. His voice was husky but firm, so Poe complied. He wasn't entirely sure what was happening; Finn was trembling as he knelt over Poe's torso. They were both still panting. "Touch me? Get my ass —"

"Really?" Poe asked, like an idiot.

Lower lip caught in his teeth, fierce intention in his eyes, Finn nodded. Poe spit on his hand again and fingered Finn briefly, stretching him open in the most perfunctory way ever. 

"That's good," Finn said and shifted up.

"Finn, give me a second —"

"Fuck, no," Finn said and Poe hurried to hold his cock at the base as Finn worked himself down onto it. His hands flexed on Poe's chest; his eyes closed, his ribs lifted and spread. He looked like something in flight, something not of this realm, something so beautiful that Poe groaned and dropped his hold. He brought both hands to Finn's waist and held on.

He was fucking Finn again. Tight and infernally-hot, and now Finn was smiling down at him, moving up and down, _moaning_.

"Finn," Poe said, but that was it, he couldn't think of anything else. There wasn't anything else to say.

"Missed this," Finn said, and moved faster. Poe kicked out one leg, bracing that foot on the wall, and fucked upward, sharp and fast, so Finn's mouth formed around a moan that did not end.

He was still fluttering inside from his own orgasm, working Poe's cock with his hole, and Poe ended up grabbing onto Finn's biceps and arching his back as Finn rode him harder and harder, finally made him come with a keening shout that broke apart on the single syllable of Finn's name.

His throat hurt afterward, and he couldn't quite move his legs. One might have been cramping up. Finn collapsed against Poe's side and kissed his neck and shoulder, suckling every so often, lapping softly and murmuring indistinctly.

"Told you you were amazing," Poe managed to croak much later. 

Finn laughed a little and shoved at Poe. "Whatever."

"You treat all your one-night stands this good?"

"Oh, yeah," Finn said, sarcasm lacing every word. "I'm a giver."

"Yeah," Poe said and pulled him closer and breathed in.

They dozed, before getting up to wash and drink something before putting down an extra duvet and climbing back on the platform.

"Don't go," Finn had mumbled at one point in the night. He'd flopped over, arm falling across Poe's chest, and that was that.

A few hours after that, Poe stirred again. He was tucked up against Finn's back and their hips were moving together. His cock was sore but hard, his body warm and heavy, and when he tried to pull away, Finn twisted his neck and murmured, "Keep going."

"But —" His mouth was sticky, his tongue thick. Finn took Poe's wrist and brought his hand down his erect cock. "Oh."

"Please."

"Yeah, buddy, anything." Poe wriggled, nudged his knee between Finn's, and rocked his hips so his dick slipped between Finn's thighs. He stroked Finn in time with the slow, lazy thrusts and they fell back to sleep like that.

Now it really was morning. The light in the room was unequivocal. Poe needed to piss, needed to eat about three meals' worth of food, needed to get to the space port if he wanted to make his flight back to Yavin.

Naked, his profile lit by the morning, Finn was sitting next to him. He had a jersey in his hands but he was looking at it like it was an alien artifact, wholly mysterious.

"Hey," Poe said and pulled himself up until he was sitting, too. "Morning."

Finn coughed and nodded and didn't look at Poe until Poe pushed gently at his shoulder.

"Marry me?" Finn said. As the words occurred, as he heard himself, his face opened up in wonder, eyes widening, brows lifting, mouth soft and red. 

"Finn —"

"Marry me," he said, much more firmly but with no less wonder. "Poe."

"Marry you," Poe said. His skin was tight, _alight_, sparking and glowing. "Finn."

"I don't want you to go," Finn said. "I don't want to be apart again. I don't want whatever stupid shit we kept pulling to keep happening." He fumbled for Poe's hand. "I want you. Can we do that?"

He was pleading, sure, but he was also _offering_ something. He looked exactly like he had when he first took off the trooper helmet, when he had everything to lose and nothing but wild, sudden hope. He was beautiful. Poe half-collapsed against him, half-yanked him close, and nodded and gulped and said yes several times.

*

They managed to scrounge up a seat on the slow flight to Yavin-4 for Finn. They were jammed into the underheated passage between second class and freight and huddled under a heavy bantha-wool blanket to keep warm. 

Finn admitted he didn't, quite, know what marriage meant or entailed. 

"Makes two of us," Poe said and squeezed his hand. "Guess we find out together?"

"Looks like it." Finn kissed him again. Maybe the kiss was the constant and their conversation was its punctuation; he wasn't entirely sure. Exhilaration still coursed through him.

"I don't have to ask Chewie for his permission, do I? Nothing archaic like that?" Poe asked when they next paused. "Because, honestly, I do not think I'd get it."

"No," Finn said. "Not sure you would."

Scowling, Poe pretended hurt. "You're my affianced! You're supposed to think the galaxy of me!"

"Sorry?"

"You don't sound sorry."

Finn had lost track of the actual subject. "I do think the galaxy of you. But I also know your...shortcomings."

"Weird, since I don't have any."

"Right, right," Finn said. "My mistake." He leaned in, hunching his shoulder to keep the blanket in place. "Kiss me again?"

"Oh, so my kissing method isn't a shortcoming?"

"Far from it, actually."

Poe grinned at that. He seemed genuinely delighted by the compliment and turned a bit, arms going around Finn, to kiss him breathless.

"Speaking of archaic customs," Poe said later, "are there any you want to do?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know! I never thought about a wedding before!"

"You never did finish telling me about Yavin weddings," Finn said.

"Oh, they're ridiculous," Poe said and Finn's expression must have changed, because he added hurriedly, "they don't _have_ to be! Just, people around here like an excuse for a party."

"All right. Okay." Fear had momentarily stabbed through him at the idea of a huge, crowded event. "Promise?"

"That my people are insatiable party animals? Yeah."

"No, that —"

"That we can just run the arch and be done with it? Also yeah."

"I don't know —" Finn took a breath. "I don't know what that is."

"Running the arch," Poe repeated. "You, you know. Hold hands and move forward together and then you're married."

"Uh-huh."

"There's a big arch back on my mom's planet," Poe said. "Ancient. It's really beautiful, limestone and carved driftwood. You should see the holos of their wedding. I was about a tenday from being born and my dad looks like such a dork."

How could Finn have lost this memory? He'd forgotten what it was like to talk with Poe, to coast and splash and ride the warm currents of his rapidly-changing thoughts and associations. It was such a different approach from what Finn had become accustomed to among the legislators. There, you had to be precise, careful, economic with both language and concept.

With Poe, however, thoughts and words branched and budded and _swirled_.

"So we'll run the arch?" Finn asked. He could not stop smiling. He didn't want to.

Poe nodded, his face sober, his eyes, both the good and the bad one, fixed on Finn. "We will."

At the Yavin spaceport, they sent BB-8 with their luggage — Poe's instruments and their two satchels — on ahead to Kes's place. It was very early morning on the moon and the streets were deserted. The gas giant hung above the horizon, filling nearly a quarter of the twilight sky.

"C'mon," Poe said and set off down a broad path into the jungle.

They hiked up a gentle incline as the jungle woke to the day. When they came to a clearing overlooking one of the ancient temples, Poe gestured to stop. He hadn't spoken for over an hour. He pulled off his shoes and bounced in the mud. A solitary takhtajan tree was just ahead, its whorled branches lifted in an arch over the temple. Its papery bark, usually silver, looked like it was blushing under the morning sun.

The jungle smelled like home, wet and sweet and endless. He felt small and stooped within it.

"This is stupid," Poe said. "You know what? Forget it. Forget I ever said anything. Forget it all."

Finn, seated on a low outcropping of rock and bent over to remove his boots, glanced up. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing! Everything!" Poe paced and tugged at his hair and gesticulated, all at the same time.

"Can you narrow it down a little?"

"Very funny," Poe said, sinking down next to Finn. There wasn't quite enough room on the rock, so he perched rather precariously. 

"I'm a laugh riot, everyone knows that."

"You are, though." Poe slipped his arm around Finn's waist, mostly out of affection but partially for balance. In a much smaller voice, with his forehead against Finn's bicep, he added, "Buddy, I think I fucked up."

Finn shifted to give Poe a little more room. He lowered his face to the crown of Poe's skull and whispered back, "What the hell are you talking about, Dameron?"

"This," Poe said without moving. His fingers dug into Finn's hip. "I didn't think this through."

"You ran ahead into a situation without fully considering the outcomes?"

"Shut up," Poe mumbled.

"That doesn't sound like you."

"Shut _up_."

"And now the consequences are becoming clear and you're panicking?"

"Man!" Poe bit down, through the gauzy fabric of Finn's shirt, and shook his head like a zerdo-pup with a new stick.

Finn pulled him even closer, half across his lap, and pressed his mouth to Poe's scalp. "It's going to be all right."

"You don't know that!"

"But I can do something about it."

About to tumble off the rock, Poe braced his free hand on Finn's knee and hauled himself up. "You sound pretty sure of yourself there."

Finn smiled at him. "I am."

"Can I have some?"

"Some what?"

"Confidence! Certainty. You know."

Tilting his head, Finn feigned surprise. "Poe Dameron lacks confidence? Since when?"

"Stop teasing me!"

"Why? It's fun."

"It's mean," Poe said and folded his arms. "Also accurate, so point to you. Are you almost done with your boots? How long does it take to get them off?"

"Someone interrupted me," Finn said as he bent back to the task. "Weird guy, anxiety attack, it was very messy."

"Yeah, yeah, just get a move on."

"What's the hurry?" Finn removed his second boot and lined the pair up neatly in front of the rock. The grass and dirt were warm on his bare feet, still damp with the night's rain.

Poe scowled slightly, taking the question as a challenge. "No hurry. Who said there was a hurry?"

"You did," Finn replied and took his hand. Poe had been barefoot for a long while now, so his feet were streaked and spattered with mud and bright blue blades of grass. "You did, and I agree."

Poe blinked a couple times and squeezed Finn's hand in return. "With what?" 

"With the hurry," Finn replied. "And the nerves and doubts, too. All of it."

"Oh." Poe shook his hair back and nodded. "That's. That's good. I think?"

"Man," Finn said softly. He pressed up against Poe's side and kissed him — cheek first, hard jawbone, and finally the warm, welcoming breadth of his mouth. Poe made some kind of noise as he turned toward Finn, his hand on Finn's neck. The kiss deepened and stretched out, its warmth twisting through them, wrapping them up as they swayed. 

When their mouths slid apart so they could breathe, Finn continued, "It's very good."

"Yeah," Poe said after a moment. The kiss had sent him slightly off-balance, less subject to gravity than usual. "Should we go do this, then?"

Finn's smile took its sweet time unfurling. As it did, however, Poe calmed, piece by piece, fear by fear falling away.

"One moment," Finn said. He reached up and tugged down a juvenile moonflower vine, about a meter long. After scoring his thumb down its center, he pulled it apart into two, all but the last quarter. "Give me your hand."

"Gladly, my man." Poe tried to sound suave. Finn just snickered a little, but at least he sounded affectionate. 

With his left hand, Finn wrapped the vine around their clasped hands, then one half of the split part up Poe's arm to the elbow.

"Do me now," Finn said and shifted closer. He caught Poe's eye. "You can make a dirty joke about doing me if you want."

"I'm good," Poe replied. "Thanks, though."

"Some things just don't change," Finn said. 

"Yeah, true." Poe struggled with the split vine, getting sap all over his fingers, while Finn stood patiently before him. When he finally succeeded getting Finn's forearm wrapped, he took a deep breath and asked, "Finn?"

"Yeah?"

Poe exhaled. "We're doing this."

"We are."

Barefoot, bound together with greenery, they took a step forward, and then another. The arching branches of the old takhtajan tree above them moved in the breeze.


End file.
